Saturday, September 29, 2012

I bow my head in shame! It has been so very long since I blogged. Have no fear....after many months I am back in my craft room and hopefully will have more projects to come! Today I have a Fall Burlap Wreath to show you.

Supplies Needed:

- 1 foam or straw wreath

- 1 yard of burlap

- Hot glue gun
-Glue sticks

- Scissors

- Various pieces of fabric

- Felt or cardboard

- Wooden letter

- Acrylic paint

- Paintbrush

- Ribbon

The very first thing you need to do is to paint your wooden letter with acrylic paint. I chose to paint mine chocolate brown. I painted mine the night before to allow plenty of time to dry since it always takes several coats to get the wood completely covered.

Let's start getting our wreath together. I took the plastic off of my wreath since I figured that the hot glue would probably just melt through it and cause me some problems. I next cut some of the burlap into 2 inch strips. I would cut a couple at a time as I went along wrapping the wreath. Don't cut your entire piece of burlap at once! Glue the start of a strip to your wreath and then wrap it around the wreath until you have the entire wreath covered in burlap. Secure the end of your last piece so that it will be on the back of your wreath. Now take a moment and use your scissors to clean up the little burlap threads that are sticking up all over your wreath.

Now that we have burlap wreath base, it's now time to add that letter you painted to it. Decide the best position for your particular letter before you put any glue on it. The correct positioning will be different for each letter. Just remember that the more parts of the letter that are glued to the wreath, the more secure it will be.

Now that you have your wreath base all done, put it aside for a while. It's now time to make all those fabric rosettes. I know that they look intimidating, but they are really easy to make. Take your fabric and cut it into 1 1/2 to 2 inch strips. Don't worry about making perfect cuts. You can even cut it in strips as you go....I should have taken that advice myself. ha ha! Each rosette will need a "base" to glue it to. I found some black felt in my stash that worked perfect. You could also use thin cardboard or something similar. Cut out a 3 inch square of felt. Take your strip of fabric and fold the strip in half and then fold that half in half. I glued all that together at the end just to keep it all together and make starting it easier. You will now glue that gathered end to the center of your felt.

The next part is when it can get tricky. You will constantly be twisting the fabric and wrapping it around and around in a circle and gluing it down to the felt as you go. When the rosette is the right size is your decision. I made a couple of different sized ones. When you get to the size you want and when you have about a half inch of fabric left, stop and trim your felt backing so that it is no longer seen. Take the fabric tail and fold it over to the back and secure it with glue.

You now have a cute little collection of fabric and burlap rosettes.

The next step is to glue all of those rosettes to your wreath. You may be wondering just how many rosettes that you need to make. I can't really answer that. As I went along making them, I would stop occasionally and lay the ones I had made on my wreath to see how many more I needed and what sizes. I had to make a couple more even after I had the rest glued on the wreath to fill in some holes. How many rosettes you will need is your personal preference.

To hang my wreath, I simply wrapped a piece of brown ribbon around the top and then attached it to my hook on my front door with a bow.

There you have it....a fun Fall Burlap Wreath to add to your front door and I made it for about $15!

Monday, September 24, 2012

Last week, I picked up a filing cabinet at a business that was closing down. All of the other cabinets the same size were $75, but the one I chose was only $25. The lock is missing, a drawer slides came unwelded, there was some rust, but it just screamed “PROJECT” to me, so I grabbed it and ran.

This is the sad filing cabinet, before it got some style:

Add some fabric, Mod Podge, knobs, etc and this is the result:

I may add some ribbon details, but I haven’t decided quite yet. I did learn one important thing when taking on a project like this one – SAND OR SEAL ANY RUST! Don’t ask how I know this, but it might play into why I may or may not add ribbon trim. ;)

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Hubby and I took on a rather fun project today that made a huge difference in our hallway and perked our living room up a bit, as well.

Hubby was perusing Craigslist (as always) and ran across an add for free snap-together window panes. Now, we do not need faux snap-together window panes, but we are always up for project materials, so off to Nashville we went to pick up the goodies.

(Actual photo from the Craigslist ad)

Normally, I am the crafty one in the house, but today, Hubby really showed me up! He used the window panes and came up with some fantastic wall art to really dress up our boring hallway.

We had done nothing to the hallway since moving in a year ago, except toss down a couple of throw rugs. This is a photo of our über-boring hallway, before we moved in:

A few hours later, a bit of paint on a few of the pieces, and we have some unique art work that really fits our style. The paintings were picked up on clearance at Old Time Pottery several years ago and had been hanging in other parts of the house until this weekend.

The moral of the story is if you see a box of materials, think OUTSIDE the box! There is no rule that says they can only exist as one specific thing in their lifetime! ;)